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uTorrent client for Linux?

12-07-2006, 06:43 PM

BitTorrent and uTorrent have joined forces today, for what both companies envision will be the best BitTorrent client. BitTorrent of course offers an official Linux version of its software, while uTorrent is Windows-only (at this time). This leads me to wonder... with today's announcement will this eventually lead to an official uTorrent client for Linux?

uTorrent is reported to work with Cedega (not WINE), and KTorrent is already very nice, but what do you hope for as a Linux user out of today's announcement?

This is Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of ?Torrent.

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and ?Torrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired ?Torrent as it recognized the merits of ?Torrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together ?Torrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.

What does this mean for the ?Torrent community? Not much, at least not at first. The intention is to maintain the website as it is, and keep the forums and community active. Moving forward behind the scenes, we will continue to develop ?Torrent and will be using the codebase in other applications, especially ones where a fast, lightweight implementation is more suitable, such as embedded systems on TVs, cell phones, and other non-PC platforms.

The existent ?Torrent and BitTorrent communities are immensely valuable to us, which is why we are announcing this here first to make sure you're all the first to know about the news. The plan is to continue to foster the health and growth of the community that has been critical to the success of ?Torrent. Thank you in advance for your support.

Great. I really hope we'll get a Linux version, I've asked Ludde about this many times and he always said once he is satisfied with the Windows builds he'll start porting the program to other O.S. It also helps that I've donated $ 100 to give him further incentive...

Comment

After the recent announcement by BitTorrent Inc that it has acquired the popular, lightweight Windows torrent client, ?Torrent, there has been much speculation about the company making the source code of ?Torrent public.

?TorrentBitTorrent Inc?s official client is Open Source. Sadly, it is unpopular among users due to its bulky nature, and has lost market share to other, more lightweight and feature-full clients like ?Torrent and Azureus. At one point, Azureus had many features that ?Torrent could not boast of, but this has since changed and ?Torrent is now a very feature-rich, and at the same time, small and lightweight program. People like it so much that they even go to great lengths to emulate it on Mac OS X and Linux.

i loved utorrent because it was a shining example of how apps should really be written.

most programmers just go the easy way, making their software bloated by borrowing as much code as possible from existing solutions, to avoid writing as much code as possible, or just because some other programming language is easier to write the app with. ("why should we care? today's hardware will take it").

but since utorrent got that 'corporate' feel, i got a change of heart about it.

oh well, i don't use windows anymore anyway :]

i'm a linux console freak, and rtorrent is my client of choice. it keeps it dependencies to reasonable minimum (curl, sigc++, ncurses), and the client is small and fast, with pretty efficient ncurses ui. if you think it's too bloated for you - maybe ctorrent is what you need :]

it doesn't have all the features of utorrent (dht, rss is missing, maybe some kind of scheduling as well) but it's going forward at a somewhat steady rate.